FILE PHOTO: Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, walks inside the courthouse during a break on the last day of his trial, charged with failing to act on historical allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts by a priest in his diocese, at the courthouse in Lyon, France, January 10, 2019. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot/File Photo
LYON, France (Reuters) – A French appeals court on Thursday overturned an earlier ruling against Philippe Barbarin, a Roman Catholic cardinal who was convicted last year of failing to report sexual abuse charges.
Barbarin, 69, had been the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in a child sex abuse scandal in the French Catholic Church.
He was given a six-month suspended sentence in March 2019 but he denied the allegations and appealed the ruling.
The Lyon court had ruled that from July 2014 to June 2015 Barbarin covered up allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in the 1980s and early 1990s by former French Catholic priest Bernard Preynat.
The trial for Preynat, who faces charges of abusing dozens of boy scouts, began this month.
Barbarin’s trial has put Europe’s senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when Pope Francis is under fire for the church’s response to a sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the church, damaging its standing around the globe.
Reporting by Catherine Lagrange in Lyon; Writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Matthieu Protard; Editing by Gareth Jones and Hugh Lawson